Portland writer Kari Luna's first novel, "The Theory of Everything," isn't quite like anything you've read before. Like her physicist father, 14-year-old Sophie Sophia is obsessed with 1980s music. And like him, Sophie sometimes sees things that aren't there, including a marching band made up of pandas, or birds that leave the wallpaper they are printed on and fly.

Is Sophie crazy? Her mom worries that she is, moving to new towns when Sophie's reactions to her visions attract too much attention. Her father, who stayed behind in Brooklyn, never calls or writes. Then Sophie learns her dad's physics research might hold the key to her visions. Guided by her shaman panda, Walt, and accompanied by her new best friend, Finny, she takes the train to New York City to try to track down her father and find out some answers.

Lighthearted and truly imaginative, the book introduces readers to the power of love and even a little bit of string theory.

In Washington resident Amber Kizer's "A Matter of Days," nearly everyone in the world has died from a pandemic called BlueStar for the star-shaped blue bruises it leaves on victims.

Sixteen-year-old Nadia and her 12-year-old brother, Rabbit, survive thanks to shots secretly given them by their uncle, a military doctor who tried to prepare them for what he guessed was coming. On the day their mother dies, the two set off from Seattle on a cross-country journey to West Virginia, where they hope to find their survivalist grandfather hunkered down. Hunkering down is a specialty in the family. Before he was killed in Afghanistan, their father taught them to adapt and survive, saying, "Be the cockroach."

Along the way, the siblings gather a dog, a bird and Zach, a former Los Angeles street kid. Guns and medicine quickly become the currency in the new world. The few survivors they meet range from benign to gun-toting crazies, but this fast-paced book still manages to be hopeful.

Portland resident Cat Winters sets her first novel, "In the Shadow of Blackbirds," during the flu pandemic of 1918. All public gathering places have been closed, people wear gauze masks, and a single cough in public can cause a panic. The war has also aroused people's suspicions. People burn books by German poets and change their names if they sound too foreign.

When her father is arrested in Portland for anti-Americanism, 16-year-old Mary Shelley Black must go live with her aunt in San Diego. With so many deaths, mourners flock to seances and spirit photographers. Mary, a budding scientist, does not believe in such trickery. But then comes the terrible news that her sweetheart had died in battle. At Stephen's funeral, Mary hears him whispering from his coffin. His spirit comes to her begging for help. Is she crazy? If not, what torments him so?

In this book, which features fascinating historical photographs, the passion of first love and the paranoia of the times are realistically and movingly rendered.

-- April Henry is the author of five books for teens, most recently "The Night She Disappeared."